The Striped Hyena
Thomas Bewick (Cherryburn 1753 - Gateshead 1828)
Category
Matrices and engraving plates
Date
1788 - 1790
Materials
Boxwood [buxus sempervirens]
Measurements
51 x 76 mm
Order this imageCollection
Cherryburn, Northumberland
NT 530108
Caption
In 1790, the engraver Thomas Bewick and his business partner Ralph Beilby published a ‘General History of Quadrupeds’. This natural history volume was filled with Bewick’s ground-breaking illustrations of animals, which were often minutely observed and alive with detail. The fresh approach was successful and led to another ambitious publication - ‘A History of British Birds’, published in two volumes in 1797 (Land Birds) and 1804 (Water Birds). Bewick’s process involved sketching his subjects and then transferring these outlines onto boxwood blocks, with further details added as the blocks were engraved. A faint sketch for a striped hyena survives in a private collection, published as Thomas Bewick: The sketchbook of 1792-1799.
Summary
A printing block engraved by Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) from boxwood, depicting a striped hyena in a grassy landscape with distant rocks and trees. The hyena stands in profile with its face turned toward the viewer. A small section of the block depicting the tail has been cut out and a replacement piece inserted, pegged into position. The image was originally published in 1790 as an illustration for ‘THE STRIPED HYENA’ in Ralph Beilby’s (1743-1817) A General History of Quadrupeds, p.257. It also appears in subsequent editions including: in the second edition of 1791, p.257; in the third edition of 1792, p.257; in the fourth edition of 1800, p. 298; in the fifth edition of 1807, p. 298.
Full description
Tattersfield (2017) notes that when Bewick originally engraved this hyena block, he made an error with the tail and printed the erroneous image as part of his Proposals for the forthcoming work. On 29 May 1788 his brother, John Bewick, wrote ‘I was exceeding sorry, & vext, to see your Hyena done without a tail, an Animal particularly well known among the curious…I was obliged to cut it from the Proposals as I could not show it to any Body’. See Thomas Bewick: the sketchbook of 1792-1799, edited with an introduction & commentary by Nigel Tattersfield, London, Jarndyce, 2017.
Marks and inscriptions
Reverse: [Inscribed in red on the reverse of the block] III 298
Makers and roles
Thomas Bewick (Cherryburn 1753 - Gateshead 1828), artist
References
Beilby, Ralph, 1743-1817 general history of quadrupeds. 1790.